E-TENDERING

INTRODUCTION

E-Tendering is an electronic tendering solution facilitates the complete tendering process from advertising until placing of the contract in electronic format. Other similar terms used for e-tendering are RFQ, RFT and e-bidding. E-Tender allows tenderers to run tenders through a secure website. It offers a simple, secure, standard, efficient and cost effective way to manage tenders compare with conventional tendering procedures. E-Tendering is suitable for tenders of all types and sizes of project. It can be used for public sector as well as private sector tenders. Tenders can be run as either sealed or unsealed.

BENEFITS
The business benefits of using e-tendering are as follows:

• Reduced tender cycle-time
• Maintains and improved an audit trail of all communication between the client/quantity surveyor and contractors
• Increasing integrity and transparency of the tendering process
• Provides secure and safe tendering
• Fast and accurate pre-qualififcation and evaluation
• Improves efficiency, reducing cost and eliminates waste and many mundane tasks
• Faster response to questions during tender period
• Speeding up the procurement cycle
• Reduction of paper trail on tendering exercises
• Improved quality of tender specification and tenderer response.
• Save time and money since manual tender processes can be long and cumbersome.
• Easier management and comparison of tender by the tenderer because all tenders can be stored in one place

Some positive feedback received from e-tendering users:
"E-Tendering is a positive move for the construction industry as a whole. It provides many benefits with regards to time, cost and quality as well as green issues and can be applied to all projects large or small. It results in the tendering process improving for Clients and Contractors alike and should become the preferred tendering procurement option." - Alistair Howden, Project Surveyor, Davis Langdon

IT & construction new horizon

Computerises construction management system (CCMS)

An Impartial View of CCMS Functions, Selection and Implementation.

Introduction

A number of years ago, the principles of CMMS were applied to hospital equipment maintenance, where critical breakdowns could lead to the development of life threatening situations. In recent years private companies have come to recognise the value of these systems as a maintenance performance and improvement tool. The advent of the PC during the last few years has further boosted their popularity. As more and more maintenance personnel become computer literate they are regarded as an increasingly attractive option. Companies are also investing in CMMS's because they are generally designed to support the document control requirements of ISO 9002 and are a key part of the TPM philosophy.CCMS is derived from this magnificent innovation, yet it has to be introduced in the construction industry as computerised construction management system and applied in the beginning of construction process rather than in the last part (as a maintenance support).

Manual SystemsComputerised systems are now being installed in preference to the manual (paper based) preventive maintenance systems that have been around for many years. Commonly, these paper systems are little more than a record of scheduled maintenance. These have had limited success because of:the problems associated with training people to be disciplined enough to maintain the maintenance system, that is, to input the data to the systemthe effort required, by supervisors and managers, in the organisation and documentation of the systemtrade group's reluctance to become involved in paper workthe effort associated with the acquisition and compilation of meaningful data and statistics from the system.In a typical paper system, each piece of equipment or asset will have a history card or file. This file will contain the asset's detailed description, along with information on maintenance procedures to be used, periodicities, trades required, last maintenance dates, and perhaps some out of date information about a breakdown, which occurred years ago! To determine what maintenance is due requires someone to look through every card, check each of the last maintenance dates against the periodicities and select those, which are due. Next, the appropriate maintenance procedures must be selected from the file before work instructions are raised and issued to the relevant trade's persons. Upon completion of the work, the relevant asset's file must be selected, details updated and the file replaced in its slot. Whether one or several persons complete these tasks, many man-hours are involved and to properly support any reasonable sized system of this type can become virtually a full time occupation.

What does CCMS do?

In essence, a CCMS may be used to:
-control the company's list of maintainable assets through an asset register
-control purchase order
-manage construction programme
-control construction/project procedures and documentation
-control the issue and documentation of planned and unplanned construction work.
-organise the construction personnel database including shift work schedulesschedule of site meeting and borrowed instruments-assist in contruction project management
-provide construction budgeting and costing statistics-control construction inventory (store's management, requisition and purchasing)
-process condition monitoring inputs-Provide analysis tools for construction performance.

What returns can be expected?

The transition to CCMS will require a substantial investment. The return on this investment will be dependent on the suitability of the selected software package, the effectiveness of its implementation and the commitment of all personnel to the new system. Most vendors sell their packages by claiming:
-increased construction quality within specified time by reducing down time-lower operating costs
- by reducing overtime, spares inventory and prolonged asset life - by more effective maintenance
-reductions in wasted inventory - by identifying optimum materials to be used
-simplified access to construction data and statistics - through report generatorCCMS's should perceived to be no more than a means of scheduling and managing construction work.

This is because most people's experiences of management will have been on one of the manual systems typically used. While scheduling is normally part of a computerised system, most of them are capable of much more than this. Virtually all aspects of a construction management work can be managed by the modern, integrated software packages. These can have many options, which may be chosen according to the user's requirements. Wide ranging statistical data and reports should be readily available from any CCMS system, for example it should be capable of providing information such as the number of times labour finish to lay tile in a given period, etc. Details of the options, which are generally available, are outlined systemetically.

COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE

A communications satellite is a radio relay station in orbit above the earth that receives, amplifies, and redirects analog and digital signals carried on a specific radio frequency. Beside communications satellites, there are other types of satellites namely:

• Weather satellites - provide meteorologists with scientific data to predict weather conditions and are equipped with advanced instruments.
• Earth observation satellites - allow scientists to gather valuable data about the earth's ecosystem.
• Navigation satellites - these satellites are able to provide a person's exact location on Earth to within a few meters

These satellites are placed in different orbit ( the path that a satellite follows as it revolves around earth ) depend on what type of satellites they are. For communications satellites they are placed in the geostationary orbit. Why? Because firstly, one satellite can cover almost 1/3 of Earth's surface, offering a reach far more extensive than what any terrestrial network can achieve and secondly, communications require the use of fixed antennas. Since geosynchronous satellites remain stationary over the same orbital location, users can point their satellite dishes in the right direction, without costly tracking activities, making communications reliable and secure. GEO satellites are proven, reliable and secure - with a lifespan of 10-15 years

Satellite Architecture
Communications data passes through a satellite using a signal path known as a transponder. Typically satellites have between 24 and 72 transponders. A single transponder is capable of handling up to 155 million bits of information per second. With this immense capacity, today's communication satellites are an ideal medium for transmitting and receiving almost any kind of content - from simple voice or data to the most complex and bandwidth-intensive video, audio and Internet content.

Frequency Bands and Beams
Satellites transmit information within radio frequency bands. The frequency bands most used by satellite communications companies are called C-band and the higher Ku-band. Over the next several years, the use of a higher frequency band known as Ka-band is expected to increase. Modern satellites are designed to focus on different ranges of frequency bands and different power levels at particular geographic areas. These focus areas are called beams. Intelsat offers four beam types i.e. Global which covering almost 1/3 of Earth's surface, Hemi which covering almost 1/6 of Earth's surface, Zone which covering a large landmass area and Spot which covering a specific geographic area.

What is Installed on The Ground?
All communications with a geostationary satellite require using an earth station or antenna. Earth Stations may be either fixed (installed at a specific location) or mobile for uses such as Satellite News Gathering (SNG) or maritime applications. Antennas range in size, from large telecommunications carrier dishes of 4.5 to 15 meters in diameter, to VSAT antennas which can be as small as under one meter, designed to support services such as Direct to Home TV (DTH) and rural telephony.

The antenna, itself, will generally be connected to equipment indoors called an indoor unit (IDU), which then connects either to the actual communications devices being used, to a Local Area Network (LAN), or to additional terrestrial network infrastructure.

Network Topologies
Depending on the application, satellites can be used with different ground network designs or network topologies. At its simplest, satellite can support one-direction or two-direction links between two earth stations (called respectively simplex transmission and duplex transmission). More complex communications needs can also be addressed with more sophisticated network topologies, such as star and mesh. Some of the options available for satellite networks are :

• Simplex Transmission - applications for simplex services include broadcast transmissions such as TV and video services, radio services.
• Point-to-Point Duplex Transmission - applications for duplex services include voice telephony transport, data and IP transport (especially in asymmetric configurations), corporate networks, TV and Broadcast program contribution and distribution.
• Point-to-Multipoint Transmission (May be simplex or duplex, symmetric or asymmetric) - applications for point-to-multipoint services include corporate networks, including VSAT services and business television, video and broadcast distribution including Direct-to-Home Internet services.
• Mobile Antenna Service - applications for mobile antenna services include satellite news gathering, special event backhaul and broadcasting and maritime services
• Star Network - applications for Star Networks include corporate networks, distance learning
• Mesh Network - applications for Mesh Networks include national and international telephony and data networks, rural telephony
  

WHAT IS ICT?

ICT is an acronym that stands for Information Communications Tecnology.

However, apart from explaining an acronym, there is not a universally accepted defininition of ICT? Why? Because the concepts, methods and applications involved in ICT are constantly evolving on an almost daily basis. Its difficult to keep up with the changes - they happen so fast.

Lets focus on the three words behind ICT:

- INFORMATION
- COMMUNICATIONS
- TECHNOLOGY

A good way to think about ICT is to consider all the uses of digital technology that already exist to help individuals, businesses and organisations use information.

ICT covers any product that will store, retrieve, manipulate, transmit or receive information electronically in a digital form. For example, personal computers, digital television, email, robots.

So ICT is concerned with the storage, retrieval, manipulation, transmission or receipt of digital data. Importantly, it is also concerned with the way these different uses can work with each other.

In business, ICT is often categorised into two broad types of product: -

(1) The traditional computer-based technologies (things you can typically do on a personal computer or using computers at home or at work); and

(2) The more recent, and fast-growing range of digital communication technologies (which allow people and organisations to communicate and share information digitally)

The C part of ICT refers to the communication of data by electronic means, usually over some distance. This is often achieved via networks of sending and receiving equipment, wires and satellite links.


Internal networks

Usually referred to as a local area network (LAN), this involves linking a number of hardware items (input and output devices plus computer processing) together within an office or building.

The aim of a LAN is to be able to share hardware facilities such as printers or scanners, software applications and data. This type of network is invaluable in the office environment where colleagues need to have access to common data or programmes.

External networks

Often you need to communicate with someone outside your internal network, in this case you will need to be part of a Wide Area Network (WAN). The Internet is the ultimate WAN - it is a vast network of networks.

TELEMETRY

TELEMETRY

Telemetry is a technology that allows the remote measurement and reporting of information of interest to the system designer or operator. The word is derived from Greek roots tele = remote, and metron = measure. Systems that need instructions and data sent to them in order to operate require the counterpart of telemetry, telecommand.

Telemetry typically refers to wireless communications (i.e. using a radio system to implement the data link), but can also refer to data transfered over other media, such as a telephone or computer network or via an optical link.


Applications are as below:

1) Agriculture

Growing crops has become high-tech business. Most activities related to healthy crops and good yields depend on the timely availability of weather and soil data. Therefore wireless weather stations play a major role in disease prevention and precision irrigation. These stations transmit back to a base station the major parameters needed for good decisions: air temperature and relative humidity, precipitation and leaf wetness data (needed for disease prediction models), solar radiation and wind speed (needed to calculate evapotranspiration), and sometimes also soil moisture, crucial for proper irrigation decisions in order to understand the progress of water into the soil and towards the roots.Because local micro-climates can vary significantly, such data needs to come from right within the crop. Monitoring stations usually transmit data back by terrestrial radio though occasionally satellite systems are used. Solar power is often employed to make the station independent from local infrastructure.

2)Water Management

Telemetry has become indispensable for water management applications, including water quality and stream gauging functions. Major applications include AMR (Automatic Meter Reading), groundwater monitoring, leak detection in distribution pipelines and equipment surveillance. Having data available in almost real time allows quick reactions to occurrences in the field.

3)Defense, space and resource exploration systems

Telemetry is an enabling technology for large complex systems such as missiles, RPVs, spacecraft, oil rigs and chemical plants because it allows automatic monitoring, alerting, and record-keeping necessary for safe, efficient operations. Space agencies such as NASA, ESA, and other agencies use telemetry/telecommand systems to collect data from operating spacecraft and satellites.Telemetry is vital in the development phase of missiles, satellites and aircraft because the system might be destroyed after/during the test. Engineers need critical system parameters in order to analyze (and improve) the performance of the system. Without telemetry, these data would often be unavailable.

4) Enemy intelligence

Telemetry was a vital source of intelligence for the US and UK when Soviet missiles were tested. For this purpose, the US operated a listening post in Iran. Eventually, the Soviets discovered this kind of US intelligence gathering and encrypted their telemetry signals of missile tests. Telemetry was a vital source for the Soviets who would operate listening ships in Cardigan Bay to eavesdrop on the UK missile tests carried out there.

5) Resource Distribution

Many resources need to be distributed over wide areas. Telemetry is essential in these cases, since it allows the system to channel resources to where it is needed.

6) Medicine

Telemetry also is used for patients (biotelemetry) who are at risk of abnormal heart activity, generally in a coronary care unit. Such patients are outfitted with measuring, recording and transmitting devices. A data log can be useful in diagnosis of the patient's condition by doctors. An alerting function can alert nurses if the patient is suffering from an acute or dangerous condition.Also a system that is available in medical-surgical nursing in order to monitor a condition where heart condition may be ruled out. Or to monitor a response to arrhythmic medications such as Digoxin.

7)Wildlife study and management

Telemetry is now being used to study wildlife, and has been particularly useful for monitoring threatened species at the individual level. Animals under study may be fitted with instrumentation ranging from simple tags to cameras, GPS packages and transceivers to provide position and other basic information to scientists and stewards.

Information Technology and Our Society

Information Technology is central to our society, economically and socially. Lately, the companies in Malaysia that produce and manufacture computers, communications technology, and information services such as FTEC Resources Berhad and etc. have become a vitally important underpinning to our economy and to our society both in terms of their own economic strength, and in terms of their productivity impacts on other industry sectors.

To an increasing degree, information technology is becoming so embedded in everyday applications that it is becoming nearly invisible, hence easy to take for granted. Cellular telephones, which have become so common over the past few years, depend on highly sophisticated computing and communication technology. Advanced processors and algorithms are integral to medical diagnostic devices such as CAT scanners. Embedded microprocessors are essential components in compact disc players, video cameras, automobiles, and microwave ovens. Consumers are protected against possible fradulent use of credit cards by systems that infer information about personal usage patterns.

In our society, the development of the national information infrastructure and telecommunication of information technology has just begun and with proper planning and investment, it will enhance and help our scientists and engineers perform the research that is so important to our nation as a whole. It will revolutionize manufacturing and commerce, and transform education.

Therefore, obtaining and having Malaysian with a good computer's literacy and knowledge in information technology is vital to the nation to our security, to our economic competitiveness, to our employment, and to the health and well-being of our citizenry.